Babachir Lawal’s snub will not stop us from presenting report on Tuesday – Senate

The Senate ad hoc committee on Mounting Humanitarian crisis in the North East has said the refusal of suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal to honour its invitation, will not stop it from presenting its report.

Lawal failed to appear before the committee for the third time on Thursday.

The lawmakers said they would not invite him to defend himself anymore and that the final report of the probe, will be made available to the Senate on Tuesday. The interim report of the committee in December had called for the probe and sack of Lawal.

Chairman of the panel, Senator Shehu Sani, told journalists on Thursday, that Lawal gave no reasons for his absence.

“We thought that now that he is on suspension, he would have enough time to be here. We sent letters to his former office and his house but the one for his house could not be delivered. The men at the gate turned back our messenger.

“Now, we are here since 10am, waiting for him, and it’s now 12 noon. It is clear to us that he is not appearing. As you can see, he is not here.

“We see this as a deliberate choice to absent himself from this committee and we believe that the general public has seen how we all tried to give the man an opportunity to defend himself publicly,” he said.